“As individual fingers we can easily be broken, but all together we make a mighty fist”– Sitting Bull
NASA stands for more than just an alliance for Native American students. It’s an alliance between all students. The mission of NASA is to bring to the forefront the lost culture and identities of Native Americans who have had a lackluster level of attention and representation. The club exists to teach and learn about the different cultures of Native Americans.
We exist to promote unity and inclusivity just like all other diversity groups on campus. The mission of NASA is to promote Native culture: not only Native American culture but the culture to Native people everywhere. The time is ripe to promote such inclusivity, with the first year of Trump’s presidency coming to a close, and November being Native American Heritage month.
This month’s goal will be to raise awareness of the injustices faced by Native people across the US and the world. We will aim to bring to light the misconceptions that exist about Native people as a whole. We, as the Native American Student Alliance, will have multiple events in the month of November to integrate our club into the St. Lawrence community. On the 1st of November, we will begin the month with a showing and discussion of the movie “The Last of the Dogmen” in Carnegie at 7 p.m.. The 6th of November will be our Native outreach, where students, and anyone in the SLU community, who want to learn more about NASA or simply about Native culture, can meet with the club. This is an event where Native students will have a safe space to be enveloped in their culture. On the 29th of November, we will have a social with the other Native American diversity groups from the neighboring schools in the North Country to form a more personal relationship with those groups. NASA aims to make the month of November one where the culture of all Native people will be able to be expressed, which has not been the case at St. Lawrence in recent memory.
For more information on the mission of the Native American Student Alliance, you can come to Carnegie 009 on Mondays at 6 p.m., which are our usual weekly meeting times. You can also contact me (jjcint14@stlawu.edu), or our president Lewis Fragoso ’18 (lrfrag14@stlawu.edu ) to be added to the email server, or if you have any questions or ideas to further improve our NASA community.